Month: June 2023

And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham. And He said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him up as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you” [Genesis 22:1-2 (The Hebrew Bible, tr. by Robert Alter). As I have allowed on a number of occasions over the past 35 years or so, there is a tendency for many of us to examine the familiar stories of both the Old and New Testaments and convince…

And the LORD appeared to him in the Terebinths [oaks] of Mamre when he was sitting by the tent flap in the heat of the day. And he raised his eyes and saw, and, look, three men were standing before him [Genesis 18:1-2a, The Hebrew Bible, translated by Robert Alter]. The OT lesson appointed for this upcoming Sunday, Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7 [the Third Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year A], is one of my favorites. I wrote about it three years ago when we were in the early months of the you-know-what. Many of you know the Genesis story quite well. It has at least one, perhaps two, humorous turns. The…

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him [Matthew 9:9] Some years ago, a physician in a mid-sized Southern town, then in his late thirties, silently assessed his situation. The Rubicon lay before him. He and his partners had just finished their regular quarterly financial meeting. They had discussed the health of their practice; it was on solid ground. They’d discussed a few minor staffing issues. Most of their talk, however, had been about indigent care. It was far from their first discussion of the topic. Several in…